Initially, I was tempted to reject its difficulty as the nth follow-up to the "hey, let's make it hard!" trend. In the game you die basically after every few seconds, making the hardest levels a flow of accidental deaths one after the other. Differently from games such as Dark Souls and Pathologic, wich evidently make difficulty part of a meaningful 'experiential' whole, Ori kinda hides the very reason of its difficulty, at least at a first glance.

At a closer look, the lifespans of Ori are so short due to the lability of what the character embodies within the fictional world of the game. The game's narrative revolves around life struggling to survive, to rebirth, to endure. Ori is ultimately a living symbol of hope - of enduring, steadfast life, and rebirth. Ori's journey is all about striving (and struggling) to survive, to keep a spark of hope alive, to keep it safe until it becomes a fire. Dying over and over again shows how flebile this hope is. How thousands of sparkles get snuffed out before one can ignite. In this sense, the game brilliantly links game mechanics, challenge, and narrative.

The rest is just re-chewed Metroidvania with Disney aesthetics.